"Entre les murs" (The Class), directed by Laurent Cantet, is based on an autobiographical novel by Francois Begaudeau, who also plays himself as a young French teacher facing a sometimes rebellious class of teenagers in a difficult part of Paris.

The film comes at a time when French teachers have been protesting at worsening conditions and declining staff numbers and when the issue of classroom violence has been highlighted in the press.

But Cantet, whose first film "Human Resources" examined the workforce of a company facing redundancy, said they were interested in telling the story of one school rather than making a point about the wider education system.

"Obviously the film touches on one of the most sensitive subjects of the moment so we couldn't deal with it in an entirely impassive manner but what we tried to avoid above all was ideology," Cantet told a news conference.

"What we wanted to show was not schools in general but that particular school."

Using a cast of schoolchildren and teachers coached through a year of acting workshops, Cantet creates an unusually realistic feel and is at great pains to avoid the kind of cliches familiar from generations of classroom dramas.

"As a filmmaker he's very vigilant about the way he recreates reality, especially when it's a reality that's the subject of great ideological tensions," Begaudeau said.

EVERY DAY

The film wraps up the 22-strong competition lineup a day before the Palme d'Or award for the best film is made on Sunday.

It occasionally shows the kind of events that have made the headlines in French newspapers, notably when the mother of a Chinese boy is detained for not having proper immigration papers and threatened with expulsion from France.

It also deals with the mixed ethnic background of a class in which the tone is set by children from Mali, Morocco, China or the French Caribbean.

But it treats these issues as part of the accepted background and makes no special effort to highlight or dramatize the situation.

"It's a bit more accentuated but otherwise it's the same thing as every day," said Angelica Sancio, who plays one of the girls in the class.

Francois is shown struggling at times to control his class, who are all too ready to exploit any signs of vulnerability and frustration.

But it also shows moments of success in which his generally sympathetic attitude is rewarded and even the class rebels drop their hostile pose.

The actors give remarkably natural performances, including large measures of improvisation that contribute strongly to the authentic feel of the film that follows a loose story based on the events of one school year.

While it sometimes has the feel of a fly-on-the-wall documentary, Cantet said he preferred to tell a story rather than make a straight documentary.

"I've often felt that actors are ultimately more sincere than people filmed by a documentary maker," he said.